


Slow Burn

by Celandine



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drama, Ficlet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-19
Updated: 2010-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 07:02:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/134324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celandine/pseuds/Celandine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus has desired Harry from the first moment he saw him on the train.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Burn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [swtalmnd](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=swtalmnd).



> No actual chan, just lust for someone underage.

Remus recognized Harry immediately on the train. No one could look that much like James Potter and not be his son. The same surge of desire that Remus had always felt around James seized him again, even more hopelessly. James had been basically straight, and whether Harry was or not, he was far too young, both relatively and absolutely. It took all of Remus's willpower to give Harry chocolate against his reaction to the Dementors and not show his own feelings, but if he did at best he would frighten the boy.

Later, when he had had time to prepare himself, he was able to interact with Harry in as close an approximation to an ordinary teacher-student relationship as possible. If he occasionally singled Harry out or acted more warmly toward him, surely that was explicable by Remus's old friendship with Harry's parents and Harry's own status as the Boy Who Lived.

With the loss of his position at Hogwarts and thus the loss of being able to see Harry daily came the small compensation of knowing Sirius to be innocent of murder. They were able to exchange the occasional cautious letter, reestablishing their old connection, by which means Remus also learned snippets of news about Harry. Once the Order of the Phoenix was re-formed and the Black house established as its headquarters, Remus stayed there with Sirius whenever he could. It was good to be with his former lover again, and he tried to persuade himself that he wasn’t motivated by the hope each day to hear some news of Sirius's godson.

Sirius's death left him genuinely grieved. It also meant he had infrequent news of Harry, mostly from Molly. It seemed quite clear that like his father before him, Harry preferred girls; there had been Parvati at the Yule Ball, and then Cho, and more recently young Ginny. Remus had seen the way she looked at Harry, very much the same way that Tonks had begun to look at Remus, only in Harry's case he evidently returned her emotion.

Tonks's persistence eventually wore Remus down, although he was honest enough to warn her that he doubted he could ever give her the kind of affection she deserved. At the time she professed not to care. Remus made the best of it. Tonks was on occasion willing to make herself resemble her late cousin; Remus never dared ask her to take on Harry's appearance.

When Harry, with Ron and Hermione, decided to search for the Horcruxes that were the key to Voldemort's defeat, it hurt Remus to the quick that Harry refused his offer of assistance. He tried to take consolation in the work he could do for the Order of the Phoenix, and eventually in the birth of his son, but Harry's rejection gnawed at him. Perhaps that was why he threw himself into battle with such reckless abandon. By then he cared little whether he lived or died, and it came as almost a shock to realize that he had not. Werewolves, however, were not so easy to kill.

Life was a burden to Remus. Even for his son he could not muster up much will to live. He gave Teddy's care over to Tonks's mother Andromeda, reasoning that raising a grandson might compensate her for the loss of her daughter. The Ministry awarded him the right to be provided with Wolfsbane Potion monthly for the rest of his life, and he managed to find enough odd jobs to get by. Most evenings he could be found in the Leaky Cauldron, nursing a glass of firewhisky and thinking hopelessly of Harry.

One evening Harry found him there and stopped to talk. For the first time in years, Remus didn't feel completely alone, even though he knew that Harry was just being friendly to his old teacher. But Harry returned the next night, and the next, and the next. A fortnight later, Remus dared to ask if Ginny wasn't bothered that Harry was spending all his nights at the pub.

Harry flushed and shook his head, and after a lot of hemming and hawing and an extra glass of firewhisky, he confessed that he had been carrying a torch for Remus for years. First he had thought that Remus was sure to think him too young, and later that perhaps Remus wasn't gay after all, since he'd married Tonks. Remus felt as though his heart would burst as he clasped Harry's hands in his own and stammered out his own long-secret love.

**Author's Note:**

> This is for swtalmnd. I gave her the prompt "carrying a torch" for this pairing, and then my brain somehow decided that I should write it myself, too. Silly brain.


End file.
